A lot of the discussion here is treating impostor syndrome and qualifications as binary: You're either qualified or not. And your evaluation of your skills is either above your actual skills or not.
But it's more nuanced than that.
I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. I have impostor syndrome all the time. Why? Because I measure myself against 1) role models that are ahead of me in many ways - I've always done that, and it's how I grow, 2) against those with strengths in areas that I have weaknesses.
I think my impostor syndrome is absolutely fact-based. I am not as good in the technical areas I care about as those I measure myself against.
My fallacy is that there is a billion things that I am good at, but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them), or I consider them insufficient to a fully rounded engineer, if I don't also have the skills that I know I'm missing (but some of my peers are not).
It doesn't help that I'm the epitome of a 'Generalist' - I'm good at a lot of things, but I don't know if I'm the BEST at anything.
I get lots of positive reinforcement - from my management chain, and from those more junior than me. But it never resonates. I always think "damn, I've actually fooled them all". And then I feel guilty that the management is putting so much trust in me, and that the juniors actually look up to a fraud.
The only feedback that resonates is from my technical peers. Luckily I get this just often enough that I don't fall into a catatonic mess of anxiety. And sometimes I believe it...
Honest question, imagine if at your company tomorrow they decide to fire one principal engineer. Would you find it fair that the one is you? Would yo find it fair if you were among the 10% they fire? The 20%? The 30%?
I ask you that because it is much simpler to answer to a binary question like, do I have imposter syndrome? Or put in other words, am I modest?
You can make the link with how people see themselves. A lot of very attractive people tell you they are not very beautiful, and spend their time trying to get validation from others. But they internally think they are the top 5%.
My opinion is a lot of those things exists because people are not honest with each other. So you can't really trust what people tell you about you. And you are always wondering how people see you.
Anyone who has survived a round of layoffs is very familiar with survivor's guilt, which manifests as an intense form of impostor syndrome. "Why was it X instead of me? How did I manage to trick my way into staying when X (and Y and Z) went?"
It doesn't have much to do with your honest self-evaluation. It's kind of unavoidable. Whether or not it's accurate doesn't really matter.
> Honest question, imagine if at your company tomorrow they decide to fire one principal engineer. Would you find it fair that the one is you? Would yo find it fair if you were among the 10% they fire? The 20%? The 30%?
That's an interesting thought experiment. Though not as straightforward as it sounds like at first.
For example, I think I'm pretty good at what I do, but I'm also pretty expensive.
But more importantly, companies don't have a good handle on people's performance. They have biased estimates, at best. See https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ for an exploration of this topic from a hiring point of view, but it also exists to a lesser extent when people are already working for you.
Furthermore, it's unlikely that a company would simply drop X% of employees based on performance.
For example, one could be better than 90% of employees, but if they're highly specialized on a team/product that is getting phased out and they don't have transferable skills to move internally, they may get laid off even if they're not in the bottom % of whoever was getting laid off.
It definitely is an interesting thing to think about, but I agree that there are some holes to the logic.
Imposter syndrome can also manifest via factual evidence even when it isn’t indicative of being an imposter.
I got a FAANG position without completing a degree. All my peers had degrees in CS. I thought I didn’t belong because I lacked formal accreditation. Having skill wasn’t as measurable as having a degree.
Thankfully, I’ve learned to see getting there while self-taught as validation since then.
I went ahead and did the experiment: I felt like I was contributing nothing of value at my last job after seven years and just slowed things down, so I ended up giving 5 weeks notice. My employer agreed I was useless and decided to turn that into 9 days notice.
The result: they are even further behind than they were with me, and occasionally people still contact me from the old company for tech advice. I guess it was imposter syndrome after all!
Accelerating notice is not always indication that your employer doesn't find you valuable, I almost always prefer to do that, especially with highly productive people: once an employee knows they are leaving and has announced it, anything they do other than tie up loose ends is more liability than benefit, and good people will do more. But their head is not 100% in it, they don't expect to have to maintain what they build, and most importantly they won't be around to ask questions of if things go wrong later, so it's almost always better to get them out the door ASAP.
The CTO shouldn’t even be involved in that conversation imo. If I was your supervisor I would told the CTO about 3 weeks into your 5 weeks and off-boarded you with other engineers if needed.
A lot of this resonates with me, and in particular:
> but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them)
I've struggled with this over the years. As a kid, once something clicked it felt like you had leveled up in some way, and now had a new skill. As an adult, I have a hard time not looking at everything I'm capable of and thinking "it's so simple, it obviously just works like this".
It's as if I have no spectrum of [I don't know this at all] and [I'm an expert at this], my self reflection that leads to impostor syndrome just sees them as [I don't know this at all] and [This is obvious].
FWIW, not FAANG, but Senior Firmware Engineer for a household name with FAANG affiliations.
> As an adult, I have a hard time not looking at everything I'm capable of and thinking "it's so simple, it obviously just works like this".
The way you fix this perception is teach the skill to someone with zero foundational knowledge of the skill’s background requirements. Or write if there is no person around. There is always documentation going begging.
IMHO, one of the biggest oversights I see in the industry today is the lack of inward-facing technical writer and editor teams, sitting alongside pair programmers and/or agile stand ups. Skills transmission works through a highly opaque diffusion membrane of tribal knowledge (reaching its peak form in StackExchange), and synchronous, people-intensive discussions, where insight is rarely if ever captured and memorialized.
Powerful, effective documentation prepared by professional programmers with professional communications skills asynchronously transmits insight and not just information. We have incredible tooling now, but ironically do not staff them.
One way to calibrate your imposter syndrome is write lots of documentation. In it, make sure you call out references for further to skill stacks you consider prerequisites lest you dilute your focus and the the prose becomes too unwieldy. And call out references to what you have used to learn meta information and abstractions beyond the current documentation’s focused skill band. If that list will routinely take an average practitioner at a particular skill level more than a year to absorb, then you have a fair baseline. Now update the documentation each time someone asks for clarification on a point in it. If there are lots of readers and few questions, then you possibly have a reasonable grasp of the material.
It's interesting you say this, because I have probably written more documentation in the last two years than I did the first eight years that had made up my career prior to that. The team I'm with now, we've been building it with a focus on documentation (and testing) that I didn't appreciate was possible prior.
We've also been pushing hard to get a full time technical writer, someone who specifically doesn't get screwed three months into the job with "Ok, you write docs, AND do a little coding work on the side in your down time". No, we've clearly got the workload necessary for a full time writer, let's bring someone on board and really let them become that core differentiator.
> Luckily I get this just often enough that I don't fall into a catatonic mess of anxiety.
So this is the sticking point for me: is it really _impostor syndrome_ if it's not disproportionate and negatively impactful? What you're describing just seems like normal, mostly healthy, reasonable critical self reflection?
To me the syndrome part of it is the overwhelming runaway thoughts part.
It's a hard thing to quantify - how do you measure one person's feelings against another?
I feel like it's not unhealthy - exactly as you describe. I've spoken to many peers who all feel the same at one point or another.
So is it that we don't have impostor syndrome because we've normalized it? Or is it the same feelings but we are just better at dealing with them?
I think it's the latter. The more you know, the more you know you don't know. With seniority comes the burden of that knowledge. You can easily become lost - where you can no longer measure your output by direct lines of code written, and you also get exposed to more and more top minds that make you feel small.
I think the feelings are exactly the same that a junior engineer faces at their first job where they are overwhelmed and feel like everyone else is smarter than them.
The difference is that once you've been through it enough times, you have the confidence that the emotion isn't valid, and you have competence to fall back on eventually.
I'm currently sitting on three job offers - I originally thought it would be easy to choose, but I find myself absolutely paralyzed right now with an inability to make a decision on any of them because I feel as though I will be expected to know more than I think I know, or to perform at a level beyond what I feel comfortable performing at.
I've had a lot of great feedback from my peers and those in more junior roles, as well upper management, but still do not feel confident.
How do you if you are capable of moving from a familiar set applications and systems to one where you've never worked with any of the applications and only know the system by theory?
Some folks are pushing me to move entirely out of code and into management but my passion is writing code, working in databases, and designing systems but the opportunities I have before me now pay more for management rather than getting my hands dirty in the code.
Can't sleep or eat because of constant anxiety over "what if I can't perform to their expectations and get fired?"
It's your job in interviews to accurately describe your abilities and talents. It's the company's job to determine if that's the right fit for them.
If they sent you an offer, I'd just assume I don't have a clear enough picture on what they will expect of me and when, and just trust that they did their due diligence in my evaluation.
Of course, if it doesn't work out, you had three offers so you'll likely be able to get a new job no problem.
Expectations and company culture can be difficult to communicate during an interview. Sometimes the interviewer doesn't even realize what would be relevant to the jobseeker.
If the company fails their 'job', you end up with the black mark of a missing block of time on your resume, plus the major hassle of switching jobs and re-interviewing. It isn't "No problem" as you say. It's a major problem that could set you back by months.
1. Don't move into management because of any external pressure because you "ought to". Also don't do it just because you are tired of writing code. Do it when you feel like you have more to offer by building and leading teams and delivering through your people than with your individual delivery. Ideally, get a chance to try it on an interim basis at a company you already have trust in. There is a LOT of stuff about management that is invisible - it's not just telling your reports what to do. Managing upwards is a terrible irritating part of the job, and you can easily become the manager you yourself would hate if you are not careful.
2. I think career progression and satisfaction is all about balancing and trading off playing to your strengths, then focusing on your weaknesses.
If you only play to your strengths, you won't grow in breadth enough. You can become a top subject matter expert, but your utility will be limited to that domain.
If you only focus on your weaknesses, you will become well rounded, but not good at anything, and you won't stand out from the pack in any way.
Only you know which of these two you more need today. Good luck with the decision :)
3. Someone else already mentioned - it's not your job to determine if you are qualified for a position. The company hiring you is. If the work is interesting to you, and they're making you an offer, and you didn't lie - then you are qualified. Learning and stretching yourself would be part of the job.
4. Nothing I say above will fix a foundational anxiety like "what if i'm not good enough and get fired". What helps me with this class of extreme worry is to consider the worst case scenario, visualize it, and recognize that ultimately it's not that bad.
So what if you get fired? Again, assuming you didn't misrepresent yourself, the company would be just as guilty of the mismatch in fit as you. You won't be blacklisted. They might even be willing to give you a referral. But if not, you got 3 offers once. You can get 3 offers again after you get fired. The worst case scenario isn't that awful.
I wanted to thank you for your advice and the time you took out of your day to respond with such a thoughtful reply. I really took it into account with my decision making. Just today, I decided to take a more coding-oriented position and turned down the management roles.
I'm saving your reply into a Word doc so that I can use it going forward. What stood out specifically was your first sentence - I'm not tired of writing code and still feel more passionate about developing rather than managing. It pays less but I feel as though I will be happier in the end.
In any case, I wanted to thank you kind stranger, for your words!
I’ve found it useful to think of not-deciding as a decision. Right now you’re feeling paralysed and unable to decide. But, in a strange way, your decision is to avoid making a decision. Maybe that’s going to protect you from pain. Or maybe it’s going to close doors. Maybe it’ll do both. But thinking about not-deciding as a decision has helped me consider whether that decision to not-decide is working for me. YMMV, of course. I hope things work out for you, whatever route you take.
Here's an unpopular opinion: this whole thing about impostor syndrome honestly seems like a thinly veiled humble brag. The narrative seems to be "nobody's perfect, but I am aware that I have imperfections so brownie points for me". IMHO, there's no real correlation between confidence and ability.
There are extremely capable athletes with terrible ego problems and there are people that legitimately fall into death spirals. There are those that talk the talk but don't walk the walk, as well as those that quietly sweat away in their pursuit of mastery.
Lacking confidence in something, judging oneself, etc are just being human. Pretty much everyone goes through that. Sure, some might project confidence in the face of the unknown, but that's just one of many coping mechanisms we have. "Laughing to not cry", screaming in fear when startled by a spider, YOLO, panic lies, etc are other similar mechanisms where we do seemingly illogical things in response to the respective stimulus.
And of course, people are multidimensional and topics/disciplines are multidimensional. You can't possibly be great at everything, but most are certainly capable of getting very good at something (even if that something is being a generalist in software engineering - which is itself a form of specialization in the grand scheme of society). And you might experience impostor syndrome at work but still be one of those people that think they're above average drivers or some such. Or you might experience it and be confident about your looks. Etc.
When you consider that reality isn't a flat 2D grayscale spectrum, it seems fairly normal that one would experience discomfort with their lackings when compared against one of infinite arbitrary scales.
This opinion is comparable to saying: "Depression is not real, everybody gets sad sometimes" or "ADHD is not real everybody gets distracted sometimes".
Just because some attribute exists in normal doses in most people, does not mean that it can exist in debilitating doses in a minority.
Of course, a big difference between imposter syndrome and the aforementioned illnesses is that imposter syndrome is not in the DSM-5. But if you look at the history of the DSM-5, you will notice that adding a new illness is a very slow and politicized process. And a large number of psychologists are treating it a bit to seriously for it to be just a "humble brag".
That doesnt mean everybody talking about their imposter syndrome would really classify as having it. Similarly people who checked webmd and now believe that they have cancer, also do not necessarily have cancer. That still doesnt mean that every cancer-sufferer is a fraud.
I'm not aware of impostor syndrome being considered anywhere on the same level as actually diagnosed depression/ADHD by physicians, nor of it being considered for addition into the DSM, slow and bureaucratic as it may be.
The variety I'm referring to is the one that comes from people like the one I originally responded to, who, by all accounts, is a successful functioning member of society. So, yeah, I think it's fair to say "claiming impostor syndrome is just describing a normal feeling" in contexts where the person is clearly not overwhelmed to the point of dysfunction.
Even if there is such a thing as actually crippling impostor syndrome, that's not what I see being brought up in these kinds of discussions.
If by "this whole thing about imposter syndrome" you are referring to people talking about imposter syndrome the way your parent comment talked about it, than yeah I agree completly: its just a humble brag, nothing else.
I originally understood your comment to mean impostor syndrome is never used in a valid way. I have seen these statements being made about mental health disorders, including very serious once like depression. I think they can be really damaging, since they convince people not to seek help. This is why I disagreed.
I guess anyone can interpret it however they want. If you’re challenging yourself in your career, you will eventually find yourself in a position where you legitimately don’t know what you’re doing, and people are depending on you to figure it out. Early in my career I thrived in these situations, because they mirrored my experiences in college. Later in my career, the problems got bigger and I found myself wondering if I would ever figure these things out, saying to myself, maybe I’m actually not smart enough, maybe I took the wrong career path? But, if you keep your composure, read the docs, ask the right people for help, you figure it out and move on. I always assumed that’s what people meant. Seems like young people today have much more anxiety that we used to though, so maybe the definition has shifted.
I think your description seems pretty spot on. But the way I see the term being used sometimes, it seems some people take it as some sort of shame-but-actually-pride badge (the connotation being that if you have the syndrome, then you're secretly not an impostor, hence a "humble brag")
IMHO, you could leverage that uncomfortable feeling positively (e.g. seeking the right people to help you, etc as you said), negatively (e.g. give up) or in a beside-the-point way (bragging about the cup being half-full). None of this has really anything to do with acting maliciously/destructively like the article seems to suggest, though.
But most people with imposter syndrome don't talk about it I assume? And the people who do are mostly just trying to say that it is normal to feel like that.
>My fallacy is that there is a billion things that I am good at, but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them)
It's like the paradox of AI, which is that as soon as we've reduced something previously regarded as 'intelligent' to something that can be coded in software, it ceases to be thought of as intelligence any longer.
If you look at something like chess, which was often thought of as very difficult, the first thing we designed that was really good at the game made us realize that you needed next to no logic to win if you had a computer fast enough to try a billion moves. But we thought object recognition would be super easy, far less than AI tier, and we still can't do it reasonably well.
I'm much more convinced that humans suck at estimating the hardness of problems, and not very convinced we keep cheating the classification of AI.
I wonder how long until we run out of types-of-intelligence to automate, and realise that “humans have a unique spark (a soul?) that makes them fundamentally different to machines” was a dream all along...
This comment resonates a lot with me. Over the years, I realized that while I may not know the most in some areas, the fact that I am able to communicate what I do know clearly and efficiently often makes up the difference. You quickly learn that people aren't really expecting you to hold the entire knowledge base in your head as long as you're willing to admit you may not know the best answer/best solution but are willing to dig for it.
for me, my imposter syndrome comes mainly when I look around and see everyone working hard and struggling to do stuff well and I feel like I'm not even in 2nd gear and doing as well.
So I think I feel like I'm only putting in less then 25% effort and getting 100% of the normal results (relative to others) - it feels wrong,
it's like finishing a test or exam too soon and looking around seeing everyone only half way through the same exam. I then start to worry what have I done wrong?
with many years of contract work, I've realised It's not me!!
I used to try and hide it since no-one likes a smart arse - especially a contractor. but now I do blow a my little trumpet now and then
Used to be a midrange programmer who others thought as brilliant. It was hard to start two decades ago, but always looking for a challenge meant consistent growth for years. After five years it felt too easy, like cheating. My peers would struggle for a week with what I could deliver in an afternoon.
Seeking better opportunities I migrated to web development, and boy, it's hard to be a novice again. Everyone I worked with was better than me at everything. It's hard to feel like the impostor when you know you're the less skilled one.
Now web development doesn't pay that well, so the natural path was cybersecurity. Still learning, and I feel like this will be my last career change because it takes years to stop feeling dumb and start feeling like an impostor again.
> Now web development doesn't pay that well, so the natural path was cybersecurity. Still learning, and I feel like this will be my last career change because it takes years to stop feeling dumb and start feeling like an impostor again.
Does cybersecurity pay better, at least in certain markets/contexts I was under the impression that doing web dev would land you several thousands more salary wise, though I'd certainly settle to work on the parts of security I'm not smart enough to lmao.
At the same level, development always pays better. I had the fortune to be promoted from senior developer to CISO when the area was formally opened at a small company.
To be honest, I feel the change came before I felt proficient at web development, but I'm happy because I was always complaining about unsafe practices, and now I get to write the policies.
the money is ok/ good in the field I've choosen, so moving would mean a decrease in money,
I do work with a lot of cybersec people and boy are they under a lot of pressure with badly designed applications - saying that it's amazing how many of the sec people do not even bother with learning the very basics eg like how TLS really works
I'm a contractor/ consultant I do spend about 1-2 years at different companies and I do pick the most challenging projects - typically modifying old stuff with no documentation
I feel that some level of imposter syndrome is healthy it means you’re cognizant of the fact that there might be something you’re missing or that there might be a “better” way.
I started my career in software 20 years ago with a good attitude and an “HTML for Dummies” book. It made me very cognizant that I was outgunned by a lot of my peers so it made me ask a lot of questions - half of them I’d figure out just figuring out how to pose a question while walking over to someone else’s cube.
I’ve gotten “better” as an engineer and there’s less I “don’t know” but I’m still always wondering, even on “simple” stuff if there’s not a “simpler” way to do it.
That's why I always fail to write blog posts. "This looks super interesting" -> do research/think about it-> "I understand it, so it must be trivial and nobody else will care"
> Why? Because I measure myself against 1) role models that are ahead of me in many ways - I've always done that, and it's how I grow, 2) against those with strengths in areas that I have weaknesses.
I don’t think this is why you feel like an imposter, rather this is a rationalisation for why you feel like an imposter.
It’s possibly to do 1 and 2 and not feel like an imposter, so this can’t be the whole reason. It might be necessary for some people some of the time, but it’s not a sufficient explanation.
You even called yourself out on it later in your comment where you say it’s a fallacy.
I’d hazard a guess the real issue is some kind of underlying generalised anxiety.
I'm in a strange position. I'm burnt out on every side of every candles from trying too hard too long with no results (due to life chaos, lack of luck, bad choices, who knows).
To survive I took brainless jobs and I find myself in a different form of pain, being eroded by uneducated, learning-resistant cogs.
Right now reading you say "measuring my self against people ahead of me" feels tempting, even after all the problems I got. It's a bit like exercise .. my brain needs it or it shrivels.
ps: I didn't know generalists could fare well
pps: have all your workplaces well accepting of your working style ?
re: PPS. More than you know, but going into detail about my weird and unorthodox working style would reveal too much personal info.
re: PS. I should clarify. I was a damn good programmer who could pump out clean, readable, maintainable code, faster than most. But only once I found myself in a job I loved surrounded by people who encouraged learning, were curious, and loved to teach me. You gotta find your tribe. Don't let your brain rot.
> But only once I found myself in a job I loved surrounded by people who encouraged learning, were curious, and loved to teach me. You gotta find your tribe. Don't let your brain rot.
I have a corollary: badly managed companies make good people go bad.
Since when one's employer becomes a secret?! And in fact, a principal engineer title in these corps mean vastly different skill and prestiges.
For example, a principal engineer in Google is usually treated as equivalent to a Google director. While a principal in Amazon is just a more senior engineer than a Senior engineer. Because there is no staff level at Amazon, while Google has staff and senior staff...
In msft, a principal probably means just a senior engineer in other places.
I feel the same way and being a 'Generalist' mostly because of my ability to adapt any environment is both amazing and terrible.
The terrible part is mostly because I got too many roles and zero help to grow (I'm often the icebreaker of a tech or role), which lead me to myself doing the actual criticism to ensure I'm doing my best.
On the other hand this kind of continuous self-doubt is stressing, so reading a comment like yours is a relief :)
And thanks for writing your comment about his comment.
I think I sail the same kind of ship as you, at work I'm like a jack of all trades and pretty isolated. Took me long to realize it wasn't my fault if management put too much on my shoulder and I have no peer to share with. It's a management issue if our bus factor is 1 on many project.
While I often get praise from my CEO the impostor syndrome is part of my daily routine.
Out of work, I'm currently in the process of finally releasing to GitHub a half-baked side-project I invested 100+ hours of personal time but was really too ashamed of to publish. It's not perfect, it'll never be and it's ok. Maybe it will even help me migrate to a better workplace.
Lot's of comment int his thread ring a bell for me!
> My fallacy is that there is a billion things that I am good at, but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them)
I see you've rediscovered Rothbard's law: "People tend to specialise in what they're worst at." (Because anything too easy seems like it's not worth doing)
I totally empathise with the thought "I know this, so how can it be difficult to know". The only thing to do is to continually learn new things, and become the BEST at that.
I can't relate with these at all. I realize that most people have an internal measure of "worth", but why? I don't assess myself, in interviews I detail facts about what I've achieved and let others do the assessment themselves. What good does it do to say (or even just feel) that I'm not good enough for a job that someone thinks I'm great for?
I just do my best and hope that's enough. If not, they can always fire me. Why worry about it?
I'm in the same exact boat, generalist to the extreme, lots of technical role models, big company, hard to find a value there.
But more and more I get that I m put in places where nobody cares what I ll code but that instead I ll enthusiastically push everyone around, make them try new fun ideas, and have a general blindness to boredom - I guess being an idiot means everything sounds fascinating and I unblocked more than a few dead end just trying or proposing stupid ideas.
I keep writing shit code - i am just lucky it doesn‘t look or run like shit, so nobody realizes. And i charge way too much for things that make my clients rich and work pretty good but are actually not good enough. And these idiots are falling for it happily and come back. I always thought of myself as an honest guy, though it seems that I am not. But then: who is.
Honestly: I just hope some day this feeling parts.
> My fallacy is that there is a billion things that I am good at, but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them)
This reminds me on a cartoon in which a rocket scientists plays down his work "it's not brain surgery, after all", while in the next picture the neurosurgeon says "it's just brain surgery, not rocket science".
Impostor syndrome is only a problem if you need to sell yourself. If you are a freelance developer or a salesman in an outsourcing company you absolutely need to make every effort and probably work with professionals to get rid of it because it's killing your life. But you are not. I don't think in your case it's a problem at all.
i agree i think who you're measuring yourself against is responsible for it. comparison is the thief of joy but in a professional competitive setting it becomes a rather vicious and pernicious thief, thankfully once you realise the only competition is with your past/present self, it subsides.
Lol good on you for not just dropping the N, but there's actually a person who coined this, and he coined 'FANG' to describe a set of stocks that at the time were appreciating very quickly. Netflix was both the smallest and the first to slow of that group, so that's why they now seem out of place.
>I usually use FAAMG instead of FAANG because I don't understand what Netflix is doing in there.
FAANG is about the pay, not the prestige of the company. They pay so far above the rest of the market that they are really only competing for talent with themselves. Average total comp at Netflix is well north of $500k for an individual contributor.
Amazon is lower than Google, FB, and Netflix, but still quite a bit higher than MS. According to levels.fyi for engineers all at the same level (~5ish YOE):
This is the middle to lower end of Amazon L5 comp for an SDE. I don’t know about the other companies - it might be mid to lower end for them as well or maybe high end depending on where they hire at.
LinkedIn is definitely higher (dunno about GitHub), but in almost every discussion I've seen about comps, LinkedIn is always talked about separately from MS. On levels.fyi, for example, LinkedIn is in it's own section separate from MS.
Highly debatable. While Amazon is more likely to be on the shit-list of Joe Public, in technical circles it comes down to AWS vs MS. Frankly if MS hadn't bought GitHub to distract magpie developers, there would be no contest.
In the U.S., financial services shops that figured out tech is money. Or, rather, that time is money and tech shrinks time. Think banks’ trading groups, hedge funds, etc.
Along with those, a larger sector of FS bitten with the transformation bug. Even in the non trading related financial services, if a company’s emphasis is on figuring out how to tech before getting eaten by challengers or juggernauts, the pay may indicate how existential the need.
On the other hand, many in the financial industrial complex haven’t realized this yet, and are still trying to “take costs out”, doing reductions in force of knowledgable workers, offshoring any roles not understood by the executives, etc., or paying bottom dollar domestically for coders and IT support, rather than well enough for software or systems engineers.
Large companies are likely to have a mix of these models all at the same time, so understand what type of group you’re looking at.
Also note that financial titles are often inverse ranks of engineering titles, with SVPs below directors and VPs as the junior-most roles.
Note(1): Pro-employee compensation disclosure laws are starting to get passed where (a) you don’t have to say what you used to earn, and (b) a company may have to disclose the comp for your role and similar roles the moment you ask, not after you make it to offer. Check the laws governing both your zip code and the company’s and know your rights to help even out information asymmetry.
Note(2): Performance multipliers are worth paying for. Automation is worth paying for. Anything thought through and written once to do work, that then does that work many times in less time, or for many people in less time, or both, is worth paying for. FANG code runs at staggering scale. FS code makes staggering money in milliseconds. Look for places where each line of code is multiplying output — how many fold drives how much that code, and its engineers, should be worth.
https://www.levels.fyi/2020/ is a decent resource. The numbers are fairly accurate, IME. You can also lurk around Blind if you want to get a sense of salaries in tech (warning though: Blind is completely obsessed with salaries, to the point where its unhealthy).
You'll actually notice that none of the FAANG are on the top 10 of that list. FAANGs definitely pay well, but these days "FAANG" is outdated, IMO. I've seen it "FAANGMULA" sometimes (FAANG + Microsoft, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb) but even that still leaves out other high payers like Stripe, Box, Bytedance, etc.
I would think that Microsoft and Amazon only seem quite a bit lower because of the lower cost of living in Seattle right? Also though taking a looks at levels.fyi salary information none of the FAANG companies are really included in the top paying list.
My tongue-in-cheek definition of FAAN(M)G is "does the company have sufficient resources and technical wits to have entire team(s) dedicated to stress-testing and breaking their internal systems proactively to ensure uptime and low latency?" Netflix with Chaos Monkey definitely applies, and Microsoft does as well. Arguably Salesforce would be there too, if not for their meme-worthy historical failure at the low-latency part.
Could you elaborate on the low-latency part and the historical failure? I don't know a lot about Salesforce, so I'm not quite sure how they fit into FAANG.
When Jim Cramer coined it (originally as FANG) and began pumping it on his show regularly, it was just a batch of large, sector dominant tech stocks he thought should be bought at that time (with the letter ordering being convenient for memory). That's all it was. There is no greater definition, and it's bizarre to see people argue over that aspect routinely on HN, given it was nothing more than a stock pumping promotion by a slightly vacuous tv bobblehead.
Yeah it's literally just a short list of companies that people see as being the big kahunas of the tech industry. In the '80s it would've been Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and maybe even companies like Lotus or WordPerfect. In the '90s it would've been more like, Intel, Microsoft, AOL, Sun, maybe Oracle, maybe still IBM? Hell maybe even Ebay. Lots of those companies are still around but the ones that are tend to be more mature, less volatile, and less influential on the rest of the industry now, and get correspondingly less press.
But yeah, that's all FAANG is and I'm amazed anyone thinks it's anything more standardized or meaningful or precisely defined. It's shorthand for the biggest and most influential companies in the tech industry at the moment, at least from the perspective of people on the outside looking in. If someone wants to the throw an M into FAANG I totally get it.
I always thought it was more appropriate for most purposes. But on HN, perhaps the most common purpose is discussing ludicrous total comp. And, at least when I left in 2010, Microsoft most certainly did not offer that. I heard that they raised pay across the board shortly after I left, but considering where they started, I’d be shocked if it put them on par with FAANG. Anybody know?
It’s a dog whistle for fellow prestige whores and status collectors. Literally nobody cares what megacorp buys your time from you. I’d posit that if you’re optimizing for comp and stock options you’re either a well-balanced person with priorities outside your career, or the complete opposite – obsessed with chasing status symbols and a myopic idea of success.
Is it better to aspire for balance by chasing both, or neither? After all, what is status if you have no-one to brag to - and what good is having a lot of free time when you are just going to end up dead either way, and with work being the best chance most of us get at making a mark on the world.
Not meant as a snide/flippant remark; this shit is what keeps me up at night.
What was the Steve Jobs quote? Something like “if you look in the mirror in the morning and you’re not excited about what you’re doing that day, go do something else.”
Or the Bezos quote about “imagining myself 80 on a rocking chair – will I regret not doing this?”
As a young adult mostly lacking in wisdom of my own, I’ve found myself coming back to these quotes time and time again. Their philosophy is sound.
If you don’t want balance, then you should go all in. In general, people should take more risk. This is especially true in tech where the downside is often vastly overstated – even if you fail completely, you can get a new job in two days.
My advice to anyone at FAANG feeling unfulfilled is to quit and take a risk to do something awesome. Even if you fail you’ll still grow more than you would working for a megacorp with a recruiting funnel that intrinsically selects for conformists and rule followers.
levels.fyi has MSFT at ~75% of GAAF salaries for equal positions (N is apparently exclusively Seniors getting a cool half mil in pure salary and nothing else? Not sure how accurate that is...)
That being said, it's hard to compare directly. I know many M folks, and some F, G, A and A folks. The M folks probably work at most 75% of the hours of the others. I for one would much rather work a standard 9-5 and make a lot than work 996 (not that extreme, but kinda) and make downright absurd amounts...
levels.fyi has LinkedIn broken out from MSFT even though it’s wholly owned by them. And LI levels seem comparable to FANG. Also GitHub is a subsidiary of MSFT that seems to pay better than the parent company.
The acronym was coined in 2013, when Microsoft arguably looked on track to be the next IBM (the year after, Ballmer departed and their turnaround started). So it kind of made sense at the time, maybe? It’s a bit odd now, granted.
They were, though now I feel Microsoft is actually a more diversified tech company than the FAANGs. Consumer software and hardware, enterprise software, cloud / Internet, gaming, open source (github, etc.)
The acroynm is based purely on stock performance during the time it was created. You could make the same argument for Apple but Apple was on the list from day 1.
I still think that the acronym should be "FN MAGA". Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon are the big-4 companies, with notably larger market caps than Facebook and Netflix, and those 4 are more broad platforms/conglomerates while Facebook and Netflix are closely associated with a single app or small set of apps.
Facebook has grown into a lot of the things. It probably deserves to be grouped with the others. I honestly thing FAANG became the acronym because these companies were making big waves simultaneously at one point, and the acronym is attractive.
There’s never been any good reason not to include Microsoft except that for a long time it was considered old and stodgy.
Netflix doesn’t make sense in terms of market cap, and it also doesn’t make sense in 2021 when it’s more a media company than a technology company. Don’t get me wrong, they totally nailed it on a ton of tech fronts, and deserve their technical accolades…it just looks strange next to the others.
Oh, thinking about Netflix, I just figured it out. It’s about SWE salaries, and not really related to much else.
…although if that’s it, then Amazon doesn’t really deserve it’s spot any more than Microsoft.
Netflix is fairly comparable to Disney in terms of business model and market cap.
Which isn't bad -- I assume Disney also has a number of highly-paid SWEs -- but for me the difference between FAAMG and Netflix is that (as far as I can tell) Netflix doesn't employee a giant pile of SWEs doing blue sky research / doomed projects only tangentially related to the core business.
Great comparison, Disney v Netflix. It’s actually remarkable to me how close to Disney that Netflix is, considering the considerable IP that Disney now owns and how otherwise comparable they are.
First time I've seen it too, but I find it more fitting actually. I see Microsoft as a lot more of a tech giant than Netflix, but maybe Im judging by the wrong criteria.
because I wouldn't put video streaming service among tech behemoths that create operating systems, compilers, programming languages, databases, put shitton into ML research
and many, many other
I'm not saying that video streaming is easy, but I believe any of those could do it easily from technical standpoint.
Google, Facebook and Amazon already do, idk about Apple and MS.
GP listed six companies instead of identifying their employer. If they do work at Microsoft, it's cruel of you to out them. If they don't work at Microsoft, it makes sense that they'd want to list more companies rather than fewer.
There are also a handful of sub $100bn marketcap publicly traded tech companies that pay on par of FAANGs and may have more enticing vesting schedules too. Greater upside as well.
Salesforce has done well for me up until the last two weeks. Oracle isn't dead yet. Adobe, Nvidia and Qualcomm are also all doing well at a 30 foot view. None of those have made as much money for me as Cleveland-cliffs, though.
Also, did you get a lot of those participation trophies when you were a kid? I read a take on those recently, along the lines of, "if the adults always praise everyone, then their praise is meaningless and can't be trusted". Ie, a recipe for impostor syndrome in later life. I certainly experience that. Anytime I participate in an activity that I'm naturally talented at, I figure it's just not that difficult and I've done nothing special.
Participation trophies weren't a big thing for GenX or Millennials, according to Google's N-gram Viewer, showing up instead for Boomers and Zoomers (and the Silent Generation).
Did OP mention their age? I assumed, without any other info to go with, that they're about the same age as me - 30's and millennial. And my cohort got participation medals for every goddam thing you could think of. Looking at the 6th place ribbon winner of the third grade spoon race right here.
It also reflects the casual homophobia of the relevant communities. (It’s one thing to laugh at the silly acronym, but another to use it as a way of deprecating the companies in question.)
Weird how you went there, I think of the faces and then inevitably of the 3 Ninjas scene where multiple elements bound together are stronger than when alone
I guess I just don't really believe this. It sounds nice, and it might even be a good falsehood to tell yourself for personal motivation—but that doesn't make it true.
Yes, of course if you're an actual fraudster intending to commit fraud, you're probably comfortable with committing fraud. But feeling "impostor syndrome" colloquially means second-guessing whether you're good enough to deserve your position.
There are absolutely lots of people who are better at their jobs than they think they are. But I have to imagine there are also lots of people who are just as bad as they think they are, if not worse.
What does this mean? What qualifies as "good enough"?
If you're not fired, you're good enough for your boss.
There are billions of people from poor regions who would put in way more effort than you. Many of them are smarter too. You make $100K / year to spend 35 hours / week drinking coffee and writing JavaScript, they make like $10K / year to spend 60 hours / week physical labor and getting yelled at. You'll never be good enough for them.
Also, there are 7+ billion people in the world. That means there are millions if not billions more talented than you. You're probably not even the most talented in your group.
But why does any of that matter? Literally nobody is good enough by those standards.
There's no objective "good enough". Those people from poor regions who work their asses off deserve more, you don't deserve less. In my eyes, don't be an asshole, contribute to society in some way, and you're good enough.
Except maybe one objective "good enough": if you're not fired, you're good enough for your boss. Honestly, some bosses have unrealistic standards so even that doesn't count.
It means that the employee is able to fulfill their tasks firstly according to industry and then company standards.
Having a job or even launching a successful project does not mean that one is good enough - especially in software where having a job doesn’t convince anyone to offer one a job without grueling interviews and where most of the software produced is riddled with bugs and security holes.
If one considers the hiring practices of top companies, they are absolutely claiming that the great majority of applicants are imposters.
What if the industry doesn’t even know how that task should be fulfilled or the company. There are some many projects/experiments/products are companies that good be delivered in some many ways.
> If one considers the hiring practices of top companies, they are absolutely claiming that the great majority of applicants are imposters.
It’s a logical fallacy that leetcode is only to filter imposters. And separately, gamification of interviews can definitely lead to real imposters.
>second-guessing whether you're good enough to deserve your position.
Often with an element of "what will they do when they realise".
I've come to understand, though, that I'd been worrying about the answer to the wrong problem. I know I'm not as good as I could (maybe should) be, and I know that for any given metric I have peers who can and do outperform me. But the word "expectations" is a loaded one: when suffering from imposter syndrome it's important to stop worrying about what expectations I have for myself and instead look at the expectations set in the specification for my role.
I also remember that the company spends quite a lot of money on me every single month. So when they tell me that they're really happy with that arrangement and that they believe that I'm meeting their expectations, that helps me to set aside my expectations.
Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.
> Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.
But there may also be nothing you can do about it either. I think a huge part of the problem is that I suspect the typical experience of hearing "there's a problem" is that by the time anyone is saying that, things are already in motion you may not be able to fix anyway.
This. This actually hits the nail of my imposter syndrome precisely on the head. I've advanced to a pretty good position, and I'm definitely good at a fair number of things; but there are also things I am very much not good at, and I often worry that I got promoted to this point by "lucky" breaks that leveraged my strengths, but keeping the position will require me to do things that I don't even know how to develop.
I also believe this. I think "imposter syndrome" has been associated with actual abilities not aligning with lower expectations, with the implication that if you match the description of someone with imposter syndrome, you're just overthinking things and will be just fine.
I cannot see how this logically follows in every circumstance that someone feels like an imposter. If you're expected to learn something by someone but don't learn it, because of motivation or other reasoning, but are then put in front of other people by your superior with the assumption that you have gained that knowledge in the meantime, you'd both feel like an imposter and actually be one.
My bias is to believe that if I don't feel that I'm qualified for something, then claiming that it will all be fine in the end is dishonest, and a fully realized version of the imposter syndrome with actual consequences for failure. The bias itself, as in most always feeling like an imposter no matter what your qualifications are, is what I would consider the intent of a concept like imposter syndrome. But it is still possible to go too far in the other direction and mistakenly believe you're simply worrying too much.
I feel that hiding behind a notion of imposter syndrome erases notions of personal responsibility when things actually go wrong, e.g. when one really is an imposter, or acted similarly without awareness or ill intent. The word "imposter" itself seems to imply that you must have ill intent to be a true imposter, which almost nobody actually is. "Unqualified" would probably be a more appropriate word, and would probably make people more hesistant to use this kind of terminology when discussing a lack of skills or confidence.
> I feel that hiding behind a notion of imposter syndrome erases notions of personal responsibility when things actually go wrong
Can you say where your sense of personal responsibility comes from? Did you have any personal influences or role models who taught you this protocol? Are there any examples that come to mind that you can succinctly describe here, in a way that shows relevance to the main points you are making?
I don't always feel that I have the necessary skills to make properly reasoned arguments in general, but instead tend to have a habitual drive to just say whatever is on my mind in the hopes that it will be heard but not necessarily challenged, maybe in the way some bloggers treat their content as a feed of stream-of-consciousness thought. When someone does want to discuss what I say, the dynamic for me changes and I feel the urge to respond more carefully, which wasn't usually something I considered when first commenting.
In many cases, I am tempted to just not respond because it is the easiest option, but I feel that would essentially mean not taking responsibility for my own words. Actually debating someone is not something I'm used to, and is at times frightening to me, but I still feel that I ought not to ignore it when I am the cause.
Also, I think that I have a tendency to try not to say things with the intention of starting arguments, leaving the more subjective statements to the people that happen to find something relatable in what I consider to have actually happened to me, regardless of value or intent. But, as in this case, there are exceptions.
So my sense of responsibility has a long way to go, admittedly. And I might or might not be justified in my anxiety in wondering if what I'm typing out right now makes enough sense in the context of my other comment, but the way I'm feeling right now, it's hard to tell.
This is also one of the reasons I'm rather disillusioned with journaling if what I journal isn't my lived experience, which so long as my memory is capable enough usually isn't something that someone else would question. If it's something that can be debated, writing down my thoughts or opinions and leaving them in the confines of my private journal makes it sound like I'm just agreeing with myself.
My guess for how I developed this way of thinking would be my upbringing. There were no labels I could use that carried any value as far as protecting my sense of self-worth went. I wouldn't even consider the people I knew to be role models. Success or failure was solely determined based on whether I did something correctly or not, not how I approached the problem. Even with the labels that I've been given today, ones that are in my mind much more justifiable than the ones I gave myself long ago, that mindset continues to rule a lot of my life. I tend to accept the mistakes I make as my responsibility to correct, but because I prevent myself from entering into situations where mistakes are likely (as in, areas where I feel unqualified), I'm less tolerant to getting over mistakes after they've happened, because I've insulated myself from mistakes and their impact.
If none of this supports my original points, my belief is that it would be because of my lack of knowledge, regardless of what I was thinking when I impulsively wrote my first comment. By commenting, I tend to think that whatever fears I have about speaking in a public space are outweighed by me contributing another viewpoint or experience to the conversation, so I look past my fears and decide to comment. If my expectation was to have my thoughts taken seriously by others, maybe I would feel more justified in believing that initial anxiety was actually warranted the next time I intend to press "reply", and I would be better off not trying to be a part of a conversation I myself am not prepared to take seriously.
Anyway, I hope that, in some sense, this response was worth listening to. And I don't intend to come off as condescending or unwilling to converse with you; that was just the first thing that entered my mind.
Agree, specially because everyone has above average IQ. That being said this conversation always feels to me like "are soldiers afraid before a battle" type discussion. Either they are or they aren't has no bearing on what they do. They have to be brave and get out there. Same here, just realise everyone has doubts, and instead of spending time making a big thing of it and "dealing with it", just put your head down and work hard. Everyone has doubts, focusing on them is pointless.
The issue in these cases is that you have a hard time not focusing on them. These intrusive thoughts come all the time, take up mental energy and time. It would be best to just focus on actually building things, but it's not always as simple.
It may alleviate the thoughts if you knew for sure that you are not an impostor from a source you can trust or perhaps it will require therapy. Or maybe you can actually push through it, as you said. Anxiety, depression and low self esteem however can take a strong enough toll that simply pushing through and dealing with it may be too difficult without help.
Yeah, but this is depression and anxiety too. Constantly having to deal with negative thoughts. In theory, just change brain chemistry slightly and you will have fewer negative thoughts and more positive. Not everyone has similar amount of doubts.
So an outsider who says "just deal with it", won't know the ratio and magnitude of negative to positive thoughts, someone else might have.
Everyone has doubts, but frequency and strength may vary.
The title is somewhat misleading, because it's talking about two different types of imposter.
The "imposter" of "imposter syndrome" believes others didn't figure what they really are, that they're flawed, underskilled, will fail, etc. ; and that makes you somewhat of a fraud, i.e. an imposter, because they're secretly not the skilled person that was hired.
The "actual imposter" from the "imposter syndrome" would be someone who actually lied about their skills and flaws, or at the very least don't have these skills. I don't know if these "imposters" have the imposter syndrome or not - but for the sake of argument I would assume that they have the same doubts as everyone else and that they do have imposter syndrome.
The "actual imposter" who the author is mentioning is a con, someone who was secretly malfeasant and there for their own benefit. What's more is that from what the author is saying, they seem pretty skilled, and confident. So of course they don't have imposter syndrome: they fixed an organization, bring in money, their plan is going well.
Maybe he did have imposter syndrome too? He probably went home at night thinking "Why is this con taking so long to pull-off? I'm terrible at this, what do all my conman buddies really think of me?!"
Another type of imposter is due to the Dunning–Kruger effect. The one who thinks they are an expert, but are not yet. Like an overconfident driver who has just passed their test.
Your comment is an example of a logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent." Borrowing from Wikipedia, a good example of affirming the consequent is:
1. If an animal is a dog, then it has four legs.
2. My cat has four legs.
3. Therefore, my cat is a dog.
The problem is the conclusion is the result of a reversal of the conditional statement. Similarly, you've said, essentially,
1. If I am an imposter, then I will not feel like an imposter.
ETA: If your comment was a joke, then forget everything I wrote – which does not mean that if you forget everything I wrote, then your comment was a joke. :-)
There is a subtle difference though, in that imposter syndrome exists based on an individuals beliefs, which could be altered by reading about it regardless of whether or not that thought process is rational. So it could be reality created by a fallacy in a way.
That being said it was probably just a joke and now we’ve both overanalyzed it lol
I don't really agree. I find the long-winded version confusing, and as I am not sure if there is a gotcha somewhere in there, I have to read the whole thing and follow the whole argument. You don't necessarily have to use math symbols, but it really helps to be terse.
For anyone with even a passing knowledge of symbolic logic, what you provided is clear. But the explanation wouldn't be required for those people who are going to be familiar with that Fallacy anyway. It's for those who aren't aware of it. In that case, the symbolic version is of no help and the longer verbal explanation is important.
Agreed! I considered writing something along the lines of what you wrote, but I don't think most people would understand it who haven't already studied at least some logic.
I reckon the point of the comment was to illustrate how the article's premise is rooted in the logical fallacy you describe, and how said fallacy then results in an inability to determine whether oneself is an impostor.
Well, sort of - but we use "if" in day-to-day as a different thing to the material implication in logic. I've yet to run into a person using 'if and only if' in a way that doesn't map to the material equivalence, though, but I'm sure it must happen
yes, "if" statments in proofs are the "p->q" forms from logic, if you have p you also have q (therefore if no q then no p). If you imagine the set of all possible logical propositions as nodes in a graph, p->q tells you that q is reachable from p. If you prove that q is not reachable from whatever axioms you have (i.e. false), then p is false too by necessity, because otherwise q would be reachable and we know that's not the case. But if all you have is that q is reachable, that's not enough to assert that p is also reachable. Because you have no reason to believe that the road from p to q is the only one, it might very well be that p is false but q is reachable from another statment s or something.
"if and only if" is "p->q and q->p" (also equivalent to "p->q and not(p)->not(q), the more intuitive sense of the phrase), it basically establishes equivalence: any proof that requires p also requires q and vice versa, any proof that guarantees p also guarantees q and vice versa.
Most of us have worked with the person who thinks they know everything. Part of being a good engineer/software developer/scientist is knowing it’s impossible to know everything and being open to new ideas.
So, we have a group of people who lack sufficient skills for their job, and we have another group who _feel like_ they lack sufficient skills for their job. The author is claiming that these groups have no overlap whatsoever. There's absolutely no way that could be true. Considering how many people are bad at what they do, and how many people feel like they aren't good enough, surely there's at least one person in the world who is poor at their job and realizes it. The author supports their outlandishly broad generalization with nothing more than anecdotes. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not anecdotes.
Surely there is one person in the world: that would be the anecdote to the data. We can't disregard something if there is one conflicting data point, unless we're talking about maths or proofs.
With that being said: if someone is feeling bad because they think they're an impostor, first they should:
1. Reflect if they really are
2. If yes, improve
3. If can't improve, either embrace it or quit
> Surely there is one person in the world: that would be the anecdote to the data. We can't disregard something if there is one conflicting data point, unless we're talking about maths or proofs.
The claim here was "no single counter-datapoint can possibly exist", so in this case, one counter-datapoint is indeed sufficient to prove the claim false.
I disagree with this article and most things I read about imposter syndrome. There's usually some good advice in there about self care. But, I think it ends up missing the mark because it leaves out half the story: It is healthy and normal to question if you're over-representing yourself.
A constant feeling of "Am I as good as people think and I say?" is only imposter syndrome if the answer is yes. Otherwise, yeah, you're an imposter.
I've spoken with and mentored many new software engineers. Some of them tell me they're struggling with imposter syndrome. Do I tell them they're wrong and they shouldn't feel that way, baselessly invalidating their beliefs? No! I look for evidence that they can write code. Some live coding, a project that's not a copy-pasted tutorial, just something.
Then, the conversation goes one of two ways. If they can code, then we have a talk about expectation setting. No one knows everything, everyone expects a junior to make lots of mistakes, googling stuff is fine, etc. If they can't code, it's more like "Yeah, you're right. Your feelings aren't just valid but pointing at a truth. Let's work on teaching you to code."
Let's say I'm race car driver, but I feel like I'm no good. Some day I'll be found out. Do I have imposter syndrome? Who knows! Let's look at the standings. If over a season, I sometimes crash, sometimes end up in the middle, and sometimes get on the podium, yeah I'm definitely a race car driver. My worries of being found out are baseless. But, if I'm always coming in dead last and I barely even race anymore, then these concerns seem pretty grounded.
The unfortunate reality is that most things aren't as clear cut as the standings of a race. You can still look outward for external evidence, instead of inward to your own feelings. What do I think someone in this position should be able to do? How good do people with similar experience (very important qualifier) in this role tend to be? How am I compared to that?
I don't think it's healthy and I don't think it's useful to just sweep these feelings under the rug. Which is what you're doing when you share them with someone else and they reactively tell you not to worry. I have never seen that work for myself or anyone else. You have to face these feelings honestly and openly, see if they match reality, and adjust accordingly.
The key part of impostor syndrome is that you think you're bad at something, but somehow nobody else can tell. You keep getting compliments for the thing you're worried about.
If you think you're bad at coding, and people can tell right away in a short coding interview, then you're not an impostor, you're just bad at it. If you're coming in last in every race, then you're not an impostor, everyone knows you're bad. If you're consistently on the podium but you tell yourself you don't really deserve it and those races were all flukes, that's imposter syndrome.
It is healthy and normal to question your own abilities and how you represent yourself, but it's not healthy to question to such a point that you ignore all positive evidence. If you mentor someone who's great at coding, and you tell them that, and they still think to themselves that they're actually bad and just got lucky this time, that's impostor syndrome.
tldr: "Am I bad at this" and "am I a fraud that has everyone fooled" are very different.
To further your example, when the mentor gives the feedback that the programmer is _good_, they don't take it as evidence they are good, instead it is rationalized away. "The mentor only told me I was good because they didn't want to hurt my feelings, but of course she knows I'm really not," Or "The mentor only told me I was good because they don't really see how much time I spend googling things. Real Engineers should have their code jump from their heads like Athena from Zeus."
Part of the problem is that the standard to say something is "good" can vary wildly, and often does end up becoming quite low. See inflation of grades, video game reviews, Yelp ratings, etc. If I see a 3 star restaurant I'm highly skeptical of it, even though 3 stars should be considered perfectly acceptable by intended definition.
On Google performance reviews scores could range from 1 to 5, with 2 being "meets expectations". A 2/5 sounds pretty bad, but the description sounds like the person is doing their job fine and is not an impostor. So what does it actually mean? But that depends from manager to manager anyway. IME many of them end up inflating and "exceeds expectations" loses meaning.
Point being, I think you need a lot more context to determine what "good job" actually means. If feedback is sufficiently detailed you can make a pretty good estimate right off the bat, but unfortunately people are bad at giving feedback in general. So especially when new to a team and you don't have any priors for how they use language, it makes sense to have some doubts.
I'm sure this can become pathological, but is the unhealthy version actually as prevalent as all the talk about impostor syndrome?
>I've spoken with and mentored many new software engineers. Some of them tell me they're struggling with imposter syndrome. Do I tell them they're wrong and they shouldn't feel that way, baselessly invalidating their beliefs? No! I look for evidence that they can write code. Some live coding, a project that's not a copy-pasted tutorial, just something.
Soooo much this. The right response to "I feel like an impostor" should always be, "okay let's run over some heuristics to see if that doubt is justified". Some people actually are impostors, while some are just mis-judging themselves.
Reflexively dismissing all doubt as impostor syndrome is how you create the Elizabeth Holmeses of the world. Earlier comments on the point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214306
The anecdote at the start of the story seems off-target since that scam-artist wasn't an "imposter" of the sort discussed in "imposter syndrome".
To compare:
* Imposter-syndrome is when someone worries that they're incompetent/unworthy/whatever, when others probably wouldn't agree. They feel like others would look down upon them if (what they believe to be) the truth of their incompetence/unworthiness were to be revealed.
* An actual imposter would be someone actually incompetent. For example, someone who got hired to a role that they're actually bad at, but their incompetence hasn't been realized yet.
* The scam-artist discussed at the start of the story seems to have been more malicious than incompetent. While this would make them an "imposter" in a sense, it's not really what "imposter syndrome" is about.
Impostor syndrome seems like it is seen in people who can self reflect. Now there are people who cannot self reflect, these people are always right and they can't ever make mistakes. They are blind to their own mistakes. If something wrong has happened like in relationship you must have done it. This is how they are wired inside to not see their own faults. These are narcissists.
This implies narcissist never gets impostor syndrome. In other words narcissists are impostors which is actually true.
This blog post may not have imposter syndrome, but it is an imposter — an advertisement for the over-mentioned host domain, wrapped in an anodyne non-opinion perfect for sharing on your LinkedIn.
The basis of this claim is that the author knows many smart people who feel imposter syndrome, and met one fraud who seemed extremely confident. It’s not exactly the scientific evidence readers were hoping for
Worse, that one fraud wasn't really an imposter in the usual sense of being incompetent. He was actually highly capable at his job. Of course he was confident in his abilities when he was creating so much success.
But it's more nuanced than that.
I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. I have impostor syndrome all the time. Why? Because I measure myself against 1) role models that are ahead of me in many ways - I've always done that, and it's how I grow, 2) against those with strengths in areas that I have weaknesses.
I think my impostor syndrome is absolutely fact-based. I am not as good in the technical areas I care about as those I measure myself against.
My fallacy is that there is a billion things that I am good at, but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them), or I consider them insufficient to a fully rounded engineer, if I don't also have the skills that I know I'm missing (but some of my peers are not).
It doesn't help that I'm the epitome of a 'Generalist' - I'm good at a lot of things, but I don't know if I'm the BEST at anything.
I get lots of positive reinforcement - from my management chain, and from those more junior than me. But it never resonates. I always think "damn, I've actually fooled them all". And then I feel guilty that the management is putting so much trust in me, and that the juniors actually look up to a fraud.
The only feedback that resonates is from my technical peers. Luckily I get this just often enough that I don't fall into a catatonic mess of anxiety. And sometimes I believe it...